04/12/2013

Evidently This Was Too Subtle for Facebook

Comments

This from a friend at the Wisconsin DOT.

Heh. PRIVATE employment. Not TOTAL employment. That’s what I first noticed. But let’s go to the BLS table that’s cited:

http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.wi.htm

First, you’ll notice the Data Series for Labor Force Data includes:
- Civilian Labor Force (the total number of people working / looking for work)
- Employment (total number of employed people in the state)
- Unemployment (total number of unemployed job seekers [note: does NOT include unemployed people who are not seeking work])
- Unemployment rate
So, where is the “Private Employment” category? THERE ISN’T ONE. And even going through the data from the BLS I can’t see how stripping away huge losses in government and education gets you such a large net positive. How did they derive this “Private Employment” category? Heck if I know…And what’s more important is that it’s not a complete – or accurate – picture of overall employment.

In the second category – the Total Nonfarm Employment (click on the dinosaur to include earlier data) – the change in total nonfarm employment (the standard for job comparison data) shows an increase from January 2011 to September 2012 of 46,800 jobs. So, if we’re looking at comparable data – THAT is the best metric for comparison. Using the most recent month (Feb 2013 – preliminary data) – growth has been 64,500 jobs. It’s growth – but only half the rate needed to get to 250,000 in four years.

Even if you take away the government employment from both January 2011 and September 2012 stats, you have a growth of 47,700: 2,328,400 to 2,376,100. The numbers provided by MacIver are not there.

OR…

You could go back to employment stats – and again, click on the ‘dinosaur’ for historic data.

The TOTAL employment numbers.
January 2011: 2,830,856
September 2012: 2,835,612
February 2013: 2,838,397

The CHANGE IN EMPLOYMENT: 1/11 to 9/12: +4,756. Woo-hoo.
From 1/11 to 2/13: +7,541. Break out the “Mission Accomplished” banners.

But here’s something also troubling to see from the reports:

In January 2011, the state’s labor force was 3,067,509.
In September 2012, the labor force was 3,045,828. That’s a LOSS of 21,681 job-seekers.
In February 2013, the labor force was 3,057,086 – still 10,423 FEWER job-seekers than in January 2011.

Bottom line: the MacIver Institute is only showing part of the picture – IF their methodology is right (and I don’t know how they came up with that category of ‘private employment,’ or the numbers cited in their ‘4-Block World.’ The September 2012 Total Nonfarm less the Government claimed in the table is close to that number – but not exact.

Maybe the MacIver folks think that the 417,000 government employees in Wisconsin have a negligible effect on the state economy. I double-dog dare them to say it openly.

Regarding Walker's job creation, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports at the end of 2012:
The state Department of Revenue is projecting that Wisconsin will create 127,900 private-sector jobs during the four years ending in 2014, about half as many as Gov. Scott Walker promised would be created in his first term in office.

This does not jive with 4-Block above. Can you give me your sources? Thanks.

The number of private-sector workers in Wisconsin is expected to rise to about 2 million from nearly 1.9 million, the revenue department said in its fall 2012 report. That would put Walker about 122,000 short of his goal.

Walker promised when he was running for office that his administration would create 250,000 jobs by 2015, and to help accomplish that, the state would add 10,000 new businesses.

The latest numbers paint a somewhat worse picture for 2014 jobs than the revenue department predicted a year ago. That estimate was for the private sector to have added 136,000 jobs during Walker's first term.

"The recent report by DOR underscores the need to continue to focus on enacting policies that help the private sector create jobs," Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said.

Job growth in the trade, transportation and utilities sectors, the state's biggest employment groups, showed "mild growth" in the first half of 2012, the new report said.

The report said Wisconsin added a total of 38,000 jobs in 2011 and 2012.

PolitiFact Wisconsin has monitored Walker's progress on job creation since he took office. The latest PolitiFact estimate determined the state has created 37,011 private-sector jobs between the start of 2011 and November.